In the “School of Forestry” it seems that anyone interested in water or marine issues would be a “fish out of water”. However, growing interest in these topics is reflected not only in the courses offered and the speakers that visit, but also in the growing number of students involved in the “Fresh and Salty” student interest group.

Fresh and Salty offers academic and recreational opportunities for students to express, explore, and share their interests in water-related issues, from the study of water quality and invasive species in ponds, going on fly fishing or SCUBA excursions, to enjoying a sustainable seafood dinner.

Roz Savage, 2012 Yale World Fellow, ocean rower, and sustainability advocate, spoke to students on November 1 about her mission…

Environmental Protection Students on a field trip to NRDC Headquarters in New York

Hello again, FES blog followers! Emily here again, writing to you from a New Haven finally in the fullest throws of autumn. What leaves that survived Sandy have turned all shades of orange, red, and yellow. This is one of the best times of year to be in New Haven (although, I honestly think most times of year are great to be in New Haven).

Speaking of “best of,” I thought that I would use this post to elaborate on what I would consider one of the best parts of the FES curriculum—the clinic classes. The clinics offer a real-world experience within…

Our fabulous student assistant, Sarah, is working on a series highlighting some of the work that our Student Interest Groups (SIGs) are doing at the school. SIGs are a vibrant part of the community, and a way for students to get involved, bring speakers to campus, take field trips, and investigate disciplines and topics in more depth. If there isn’t a SIG that meets your needs, you can create one! To see the list of all of our current SIGs, visit the following website: http://environment.yale.edu/sigs/. Today’s focus is on CAFE, our food and agriculture group. Sarah writes:

CAFE, the Coalition on Agriculture, Food, and the Environment, is a space for students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, as well as the university at large, to come…

Hey everyone in the FES blog-o-sphere! Emily here, finally back in New Haven from a crazy recruitment tour of the Western US of A. I met a lot of really excellent people out there, and I hope many of you will be applying to the school either this year or if not now, then in the coming years.

I hope all of you on the East Coast weathered Sandy without too much damage. New Haven was spared, save for a couple trees and this guy.

With this post, I thought that I would spend some time talking about the Integrative Frameworks courses. Because they are the only required course that folks in the MEM program need to be taking, I figured giving them some time in…

There’s no hotel in Kivalina, and there’s little extra space in people’s homes: it’s not uncommon for two or three families to live in a two-bedroom house. So all the visitors, including us, stay in the village’s single school. As such, it’s natural that we get lots of contact with the young people in the village. The day we arrived we spoke to the high school class, gave an overview of our research, and talked about what they do outside of school, which turns out to be a topic of great interest to everyone we spoke with: the elders, especially, struggle to keep alive the Iñupiat culture and subsistence way of life. Based on what the kids told us, the prognosis is mixed: they love to play basketball (the Kivalina Qayviks were…

While in Kivalina, we had the opportunity to meet with two elders from the community. “Elder”, as explained to us, is a person of age 57 or older who is well respected in the community due to his or her accumulated wisdom. While we patiently listened to the elders’ different descriptions of environmental impacts the community has faced over the last two decades such as water pollution, coastal erosion, decreased sea ice and reduced availability of wildlife for subsistence, I had so many questions. I wanted to learn how these environmental changes had impacted their traditional livelihoods. How had their livelihoods been modified over the years? What were the major causes of these changes? And, how was the culture being preserved by Kivalina’s younger generations?

We are sitting in a small conference room at Kaladi Brothers Coffee in Anchorage, Alaska. In front of me on a piece of paper, Carl Wassilie draws a circle with a dot in the center and tells me this represents mindfulness. This symbol was Carl’s answer to my question about what he had referred to earlier as the “Yupik mind.” The Yupik mind is more than just a way of thinking, it’s a way of being informed by centuries of stories passed from generation to generation through language, dance, and lived experience. This concept of mindfulness came up in many of our conversations with the people and organizations we met with in Anchorage and Kivalina, as well as our daily group conversations.

Well, we have been in Kivalina now for about three days and although we are safe and warm, we are still strangers to this community. Our exploratory research into the everyday lives and afflictions of the people bring us to the dilemma of how to best make notes of the situation. Do we handwrite using a notepad? Or will breaking eye contact to take a note be disrespectful to the elder telling us amazing Inupiaq stories?

This is a dilemma that I am sure a lot of researchers have come across but the fact of the matter is that we need to put down our pads for a moment and just listen. Sure notes are important but missing any piece of the story to me is such a tragedy…

We’ve been in Alaska for almost five days now and we’ve learnt a tremendously diverse amount of fascinating information. We started with only a scientific understanding of climate change in the Arctic; rising sea levels and temperatures, melting ice sheets, thawing tundra, and changing migration patterns of ocean mammals. We then built on this scientific knowledge with social, legal and economic information pertaining to the Arctic region. We studied how the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 divided Alaska into 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations that still cooperate on issues like health and finance, and how the act contributed to current social issues like alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide. We’ve experienced first-hand the corporate politics between these native corporations and the extractive industries, and the power struggle that they…

I wanted to share another great alumni profile. Hugh also writes about his experience in the midcareer program below:

Hugh Brown is currently the Operations Manager of the Forest Services Division of the Forestry Commission of Ghana. His responsibilities include the planning and coordination of the development and management of forest plantations country-wide. Hugh has over 18 years’ extensive experience in tropical forest management. He has been involved in the establishment and management of various exotic and indigenous commercial and community-based hardwood timber plantations – teak being the most prominent. He has held several middle-level management positions as Assistant Conservator of Forests and District Forestry Manager in different forest districts across the country covering various forest ecological zones. He has held his current senior management position since September, 2004…